


if you're lost and you look (you will find me)

by whileawaythehours



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Confusion, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Memory Loss, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Recovered Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 03:29:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4375463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whileawaythehours/pseuds/whileawaythehours
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Soldier has no mission. The Soldier has no orders. The Soldier is lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you're lost and you look (you will find me)

The Soldier walks.

He walks for an indeterminate amount of time.

The riverbank is thick with mud and tangled with weeds, but they barely register. The air is filled with the sounds of the crash, the water crashing against the riverbank with the kind of roaring that reminds The Soldier, in the vaguest sense, of the sensation of falling. He can’t fathom why but his skin feels loose, hot, and sweaty at the thought of falling. On previous missions falling has had no adverse effects. The Soldier can fall from twice- three times the heights of a regular man and land without a scratch while they shatter bones. He purses his lips, trying to follow the train of thought that is leading to this discomfort. As with many of his thoughts, they falter and stutter into empty space.

He scratches lightly at his arm- the flesh one. Metal comes away smudged with red. The Soldier is too busy calculating his injuries and ensuring that he is not being followed to look back at The Target on the riverbank. Three broken ribs, laceration to the right thigh, bruising and cuts on approximately two thirds of his body. The Target had come off worse. Bullet-wounds and a cheek shattered from repeated contact with The Soldier’s metal fist. But The Soldier is more than informed about The Target. Serum and all, The Target will be healed sooner than The Soldier would have awoken from unconsciousness.

It had made The Soldier angry, initially, the concept of someone being better. His handlers had riled him up- cursed his inferiority and demanded improvement. His serum had been nowhere near as strong. The Soldier remembers not sleeping for days. He remembers the stake-out of The Target’s meager apartment. Sitting for endless hours and observing the man’s habits, the security, what The Target was and wasn’t aware of. The Soldier had been unimpressed with how little The Target had known about S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA’s infiltration of his home.

The riverbank runs out somewhere within the blur of moving feet and The Soldier heaves his bloodied, bruised body up onto the road that hugs the river. Thankfully the panic caused by a helicarrier plummeting into the river and the unparalleled security breach within S.H.I.E.L.D have taken the attention of most bystanders, agents and cops. The Soldier is able to slip through the streets unnoticed.

The Soldier has woken in many different decades. He has been provided with many different forms and styles of clothes to amplify his abilities on missions. This set of clothing, tattered and beaten as it is, has the most chance of blending in. In the past, use and covertness have never managed to correlate. Now, he can rely less on his skills to blend into the mindless people wandering down the street. He is able to concentrate on regrouping.

The Mission, as it stands, is compromised. The Soldier is compromised. HYDRA as he knows it- as he has always known it- no longer exists. From what The Soldier could gleam of the situation from the helicarrier comms, the woman- Romanoff- had something to do with the destruction. Without a handler, The Soldier doesn’t know what to do. There is no recalibration. No trip to the chair. No changes to the orders. The Mission remains unchanged but The Soldier is confused and disoriented and there are no men following him in a van to take him back to Headquarters and clear his head.

He remembers, vaguely- like a flicker, some discomfort at the idea of his mind being cleared. Now he craves it. Emptiness and drive. Nothing but anger and violence and bone crunching in an impossibly tight metal grip. He craves the silence and the lack of complication. The desire to destroy. To wrap a flesh and metal hand around a throat.

He craves it, but The Soldier can find no motivation.

His metal arm is on display. It catches the sun and reflects the shine into the eyes of passers-by. The Soldier is particularly conscious of this. Much of his work is covert. The Mission has been his first proper introduction to the public. The Soldier has been warned about cameras and the like, that they are now often very small and hidden in phones, which are now also very small and able to be hidden away in a pocket. The Soldier has only ever been provided with a radio. The idea of a small, mobile telephone is distantly interesting.

The Soldier cannot remember being interested in anything other than his missions. It makes him scowl. The Mission- The Target- are the only things that The Soldier knows, now. To the best of his knowledge The Soldier has never existed without orders and strict targets. This target in particular sticks in his mind.

_You know me._

The Soldier grimaces. He does recall The Target’s face, but not only from files and images and the blood-pumping exhilaration of the fight. The Soldier cannot work out where he knows that face from. Why he knows it. He feels something not entirely akin to anger at the fact that he is compromised in his destruction The Target. He feels something but he cannot decipher it.

It makes sense, reckless and lost as he feels, that he should attempt a quick visit to The Target’s apartment. The building is full to bursting with S.H.I.E.L.D agents if his observations are anything to go by. But they no doubt have been called in to deal with the situation at hand. The Target is incapacitated. Nobody but the cameras will be able to see him. The Soldier would not be The Soldier if he could not handle a few cameras.

A twenty seven minute walk leads him to the apartment building. As predicted there is nobody watching The Soldier and dismantling the cameras takes mere seconds. However, the precision of the work highlights to him the awkward movement of his arm. Something has malfunctioned. For the second time since the fall of the helicarrier, The Soldier’s skin crawls. He feels his chest tighten with something that is clearly not exertion. It isn’t delayed shock, either. The Soldier doesn’t feel shock. He is confused and disoriented, but not in shock. He forces himself back into the blank space of his mind- the drive and force of his mission. It relieves the tightness of his chest.

The Soldier enters the apartment silently.

He has not been inside before. He has observed from various distances but it is significantly different being inside the apartment. It smells familiar in a way that jars at The Soldier’s mind. He rationalises: it must have been the proximity to The Target in their fight. There is no way he could know what this apartment would smell like, otherwise. The smell of the man fills the space of the apartment, soft and unnoticeable if not for The Soldier’s advanced senses.

It is silent. Still. The Soldier passes through the living room without much interest. He slips into the bedroom and looks around, curious. The Soldier expects something clinical if his knowledge of S.H.I.E.L.D is anything to go by. What he finds looks as though it might be considered comfortable. The wardrobe is open, which almost catches The Soldier by surprise. Clothes of varying colours and styles line it, modern tees and shirts with patterns from the 40s catching The Soldier’s eye. He recognises a few of the shirts in particular from a shadowing mission. Something tugs gently at his chest. The Soldier frowns and decides that the feeling is not any danger to his health. He continues looking.

The bed is made. For some reason The Soldier realises he doesn’t expect anything less. On the dresser is a framed photograph and a sketch. The photograph is a portrait, taken of The Target embracing what would appear to be The Soldier, only with shorter hair and a clean shave. They look happy. Shirts rolled up, sweat pouring down their foreheads, and lacking the general neatness of The Target’s apartment. In the photograph, The Target and The Soldier- no, the man with the same face as The Soldier- are looking at each other. Only each other.

The Soldier’s skin prickles and the hair on the back of his neck stands up. The men in the photograph are leaving their backs exposed, lost in a moment of laughter together. It only clicks as The Soldier moves to look at the sketch that the man in the photograph must be James Barnes.

_Your name is James Barnes._

It is an easy mistake to make. Barnes has the same face as The Soldier. The same eyes. The same apparent inability to make an intelligent decision about his own safety when The Target is involved. But Barnes has a flesh hand poking out of his sleeve where The Soldier has metal. Malfunctioning metal.

The sketch is interesting in the same way that the idea of a small, mobile telephone is. The Soldier has to duck to look at it properly, hair falling in curtains over the sides of his face. It is drawn with precision that The Soldier appreciates. Two boys, one significantly smaller than the other, stare back at him. The larger is darker-haired and is drawn with a face which might one day be handsome. The smaller boy looks sickly and tired but he smiles brightly out of the page. They have their arms around each other’s shoulders. The Soldier thinks they might be brothers if only for the differences in their shading. The dark haired boy is drawn with more detail than the other.

Perhaps the sketch is unfinished.

A car moving in the street below alerts The Soldier that he has spent too long in the apartment already. He turns to leave when something catches his eye. It is concerning, the fact that he is inclined to pause and investigate further. The Soldier does not remember ever having been distracted on a mission before when there are other matters to attend to. However, things have changed quite drastically. The Soldier predicts that he has time to spare and still be capable of escaping the building unnoticed.

On guard, The Soldier walks over to the chair under the window. Draped across the back is a plain white tee. Curious and careless, The Soldier scoops it up. The tee is cotton and soft to the touch with wear. The Soldier purses his lips as he considers it. Something flashes across his memory- the sickly boy in the sketch dressed in an oversized tee, oversized camouflage pants and heavy boots. It is gone before he can properly recall it.

He frowns. Shakes his head.

With no immediate threat The Soldier takes his time to take in the detail of the tee. He tries to trigger the- whatever it was- again. Considering the use of all of his senses, The Soldier holds the tee up to his face and sniffs it. He can almost feel soft blonde hair under his face instead of the tee. The Soldier jerks his face away from it and holds it at an arm’s length, staring at it as though it has offended him. After a moment he notices the dirty smudges on it which had not been there before. A quick glance in the mirror confirms his assumption. The Soldier is coated in mud, blood, ash and dust. He will stand out. The Soldier needs to clean himself.

There is no time to contemplate the logistics of this, however, as a thump of the main entrance to the building alerts The Soldier to company. He glances at the tee in his hand. He cannot leave the evidence behind. In seconds, the tee is shoved into his pocket and The Soldier is climbing out of the very same window that The Target jumped through to chase him. He makes his way quickly across the nearest few rooftops before descending onto the ground. There are lots of aircraft in the skies. He does not want to risk being spotted.

Thirteen long minutes later The Soldier decides that he is no longer in any immediate danger. He keeps his head down but keeps his eyes on everyone around him. On the hunt. Something he knows very well. Slipping into the mindset of staying covert and searching for a target is calming. Comfortable. It doesn’t take long to find one, either.

It only takes thirteen minutes to swipe the wallet of a man of a similar size to him. The ID provides an address which is fortunately not unreasonably far away. The Soldier has been briefed on the city. Drilled with street names and hidey-holes and HYDRA hangouts. He makes his way swiftly to the address on the ID card and picks the lock with the ease of practice. This apartment is also empty and lacks the cameras of The Target’s S.H.I.E.L.D-riddled building.

The Soldier walks through to the bathroom. It is small. Sparse. A shower, a toilet, a sink, a cupboard. The Soldier strips out of his clothes, peeling them off where they have begun to stick with drying blood to open wounds. He stands, naked, in the room and glares at the shower. When he blinks he sees himself _shaking, exhausted, manhandled into a cubicle and washed before being-_

The image disappears. The Soldier opens his eyes and scowls at the shower. The faucets are easy to manage and soon enough a steady stream of hot water splutters to life. It burns the open wounds on his body but The Soldier washes thoroughly, perplexed by a bottle of vivid green liquid hanging on the wall. He decides to forgo it.

Showering takes The Soldier six minutes. He steals the towel hanging beside the sink and dries himself. It comes away smudged with blood. A swift assessment of the cupboard leads to the discovery of some gauze. He clumsily wraps the worst of the damage and heads through to the bedroom. The Soldier takes some boxers, a tee, a hooded jacket and some thick, durable pants. He finds some thick socks, too, which are useful. As soon as he is dressed he takes the hat hanging from the headboard of the bed and secures it on his head. It will serve as a disguise until he can find something better. Before he leaves, The Soldier collects his old clothes in a plastic bag and sets them at the bottom of the apartment’s trash can.

Once outside it becomes apparent that The Soldier has no idea what to do. The Mission no longer exists. The Target is out of action for the foreseeable future. The Soldier doesn’t particularly have any interest in a removal of The Target.

He hesitates.


End file.
